Murder in the Palais Royal

by Cara Black

  “I notice that another deposit was wired from Luxembourg last night,” he said. “Can you explain that?”

  Her shoulder blades dampened with perspiration.

  “I have no idea. We have only Paris-based clients. Do you investigate every foreign deposit?”

  “With over thirty thousand deposits a day?” He shook his head. “But this Luxembourg bank’s on the watch list. Think hard. If it happens once, maybe it’s a mistake. But twice, Mademoiselle?”

  Merde. “I’ll wire this money back. Close my account. Avoid future errors,” she offered.

  “‘Errors’? Quite difficult to prove at this point. That’s all you have to tell me?”

  “Monsieur Fressard, I’ve got no clue as to why someone’s depositing money in my account.”

  His smile was gone. “Then we’ll find out in our investigation, won’t we?”

  Surprised by his abruptness, she leaned forward. “I want to speak to your supervisor.”

  “He’s in meetings this morning.”

  “Convenient.” Her voice hardened. “His card, s’il vous plaît.”

  “In this branch, we contact you, Mademoiselle.” His eyebrows arched. “My next appointment’s arrived, so if you’ll excuse me?”

  “But I’d like a printout so I can check my bank statement.” If she didn’t ask, it would look suspicious. But she knew his answer already. And it was spelled Tracfin, and he wouldn’t utter it.

  “As I said, you have the information. Au revoir.”

  “That’s it?” It had all happened too quickly.

  “For now. I’ve noted your comments, Mademoiselle.”

  He shut down his computer, gesturing her to the hall. “My next appointment’s waiting.” All bonhomie had gone from his voice. “Meanwhile, I recommend you draw funds from other accounts. This one’s frozen.”

  Her rent was due in a week; Miles Davis needed food. What could she do? Her only other account, for office supplies, held only a few hundred francs! Given the speed of the bureaucracy, there was no telling how long this might take.

  * * *

  IN LEDUC DETECTIVE , curls of smoke drifted from burning cones of sandalwood incense. Aimée peered around the partition to see Saj on the tatami mat, surrounded by several laptops. “I’ve got something for you, Saj.” She emptied her pocket onto the mat.

  “Lipstick, cigarettes.” He wagged a finger at her. “I quit. So should you.” Saj paused. “How did the meeting go?”

  “You’ll see for yourself.”

  “A Monsieur Fressard left a message.” Saj rolled his eyes. “And his boss. Sounds like you stirred things up.”

  “Then this should help, Saj.”

  “Eh?”

  She unscrewed the tip of the lipstick. “At least it will get us on the playing field. It’s a micro video head.” Then she pointed to the packet of Gauloises. “A CCU high-quality video recorder.”

  His eyes lit up. “You did it!”

  “Now you hook it up to your laptop and we pray.”

  “CCU? Nice, no problem,” Saj said. “Just let me finish running these programs.”

  She glanced at her Tintin watch. No time. With Saj in charge, she could wait and view it later.

  “Bon. You should see a Luxembourg bank here if I did it right. I’ve got to hurry.” In the office armoire, she found an ankle- length black wool coat, military style, with a double row of brass buttons.

  “But where are you going?”

  “To the synagogue,” she said.

  On her way out of the office, her gaze caught on her grandfather’s sepia-tinted photo. The one taken after he’d left the Sûreté, in his greatcoat, a dusting of snow on the rue du Louvre, standing in front of Leduc Detective. And a pang hit her. She wouldn’t lose Leduc Detective. Not if she could help it.

  Maurice, at the kiosk, pursed his mouth in a moue of distaste.

  “Looks impossible for me to take Miles Davis to the groomer later,” he said. He slapped the newspaper beneath a brick that kept the papers from blowing away. The headline read: TRANSPORT STRIKE.

  As usual, the Métro workers had enlisted other transport workers to strike in sympathy. Last-minute contract negotiations had failed, and a city-wide transport shutdown loomed in a few hours.

  “Last month we had the teachers’ strike.” Maurice shrugged. “At least it put Princess Diana lower on the front page.”

  When wasn’t someone striking, she thought.

  “I’ll reschedule, Maurice. Day after tomorrow?” She pulled out her cell phone to reschedule.

  He nodded.

  By the look of the rue de Louvre’s congested traffic, the transport slowdown, precursor to tonight’s total shutdown, had started early. A full bus passed; people ran after it, shouting for the driver to stop. Bicycles and motorcycles wove among the cars.

  Aimée quickened her step. A few blocks later, she turned into the Marais. Here the streets narrowed. Little light penetrated the seventeenth-century lanes bordered by high, blackened stone buildings. Glimpses of blue-gray roof tiles glistening with mist appeared as she cut through the small park at Blancs Man-teaux. The creak of a swing set, shouts of children playing in the sandbox, and low murmurs of Yiddish from men clustered on the street corner. They wore black fedoras, long curled ear-locks hit their coat collars, and white threads hung from their waists. The rabbi, who she’d phoned en route to her appointment, stood among them. She caught his eye and he nodded. Thank God he’d gotten her message.

  “Bonjour, Mademoiselle,” he said, joining her by the park’s clipped hedge. “It’s been several years.”

  “I appreciate your making the time, Rabbi Jacob.” She extended her hand.

  Instead of shaking it, he gave a small bow. “Mademoiselle, it’s not my practice to touch women.”

  Flustered, she clenched her fist. What other faux pas would she commit in her ignorance of proper interactions with a Hasidic rabbi?

  The tang of autumn lingered in the slight chill. The dampness, the dark corners of wet pockmarked stone, made her glad that she’d worn her warm coat. And it was modest enough, she hoped, for the Hasidic rabbi.

  Thick brows beetled in his long face, a pale face framed by a black beard. “You have new information concerning the synagogue incident?”

  “I’m not sure, Rabbi,” she said. She placed the volume she’d taken from Nicolas’s Quinquin tin on the park bench. “Does this look familiar?”

  “A siddur.” His voice tightened.

  She wondered if she’d done something wrong again. A prayer book? It was quiet except for the laughter of children and the peal of a church bell.

  “Maybe I’m not showing proper respect, Rabbi. Forgive me.”

  “A daily prayer book,” he said. He picked it up, opening the pages. “We have another for the Sabbath.” He gave her a long look.

  “The publisher’s address is in Bialystock. That’s Poland, non?”

  “Where did you get this?”

  “A dead girl’s storage locker. She wasn’t Jewish, nor was her ex, Nicolas, who was imprisoned for torching your synagogue.”

  He pulled his beard. “What do you want to know?”

  She pointed to the frontispiece. “Were they members of your congregation?”

  He leaned forward, the fine mist on his hat catching the weak light. “I don’t know them. This could belong to a family member, one that turned up after the war.” He shook his head. “Some things do.”

  “I’d hoped to return it.” Perhaps this promising clue led nowhere. Again. “It seemed as though he kept it as some sick sort of trophy.”

  “This felon? You mean like the way they desecrate the Jewish cemeteries and take pieces of headstones?”

  “Something like that,” she said. “But I’m guessing.”

  “Anti-Semitic incidents happen all the time; in the Métro, at schools,” he interrupted. “But we can’t hide. Life moves on. We’ve repaired the synagogue. Why does all this matter now?”

  The rabb
i’s interest in Nicolas’s fate faded. He gave another little bow. “Forgive me, but I have appointments.”

  “Nicolas Evry died in prison right before he would have been paroled, Rabbi,” she said. “Last night a girl was murdered before she could give me information which might relate to the synagogue torching.”

  Rabbi Jacob nodded. “Your father helped my colleague, as you did. All I can suggest is that you try tonight’s evening service when the old Polish people attend. But I doubt if it will do much good.”

  Maybe the siddur meant nothing. But why did it turn up in a convicted skinhead’s treasure box? A murdered skinhead?

  And was there a link to the attack on René?

  THURSDAY

  SWEAT DOTTED RENÉ’S brow. Gritting his teeth, arm muscles straining, he pulled the blue elastic exercise band harder. Determined he could do this, he pulled a centimeter more. Then another. His arms shook as he managed to join the ends of the thick rubber band together.

  “You’re pushing yourself, Monsieur Friant!” The smiling therapist, blond and soignée in her masseuse outfit, touched his arm. “I’ve never seen a patient work so hard so soon after surgery. Of course, we don’t want you to lose muscle mass or flexibility, but take it easy. Remember, your wound’s still healing.”

  René wished he could wear regular therapy sweats instead of the children’s size, printed with trucks.

  “I’m so encouraged by the effects of electrical stimulation on your hip dysplasia,” she said. Another smile. “We’ll keep it up.”

  Before he could suggest discussing tomorrow’s therapy session over coffee, she pressed something into his hand. “Won- derful work. You deserve a prize. Here.” She smiled as she handed him a sticker.

  He looked down. A blue unicorn sticker. For a preschooler.

  “Must run, my husband’s waiting,” she smiled. “A demain.”

  It figured.

  René grabbed the walker, made his way to his room and up the aching climb of the three steps to his hospital bed, eased himself between the covers, and collapsed. A big stupid showoff, and now he’d pay. Wouldn’t he ever learn? The Leuko-tape strapped around his waist chafed. For two centimes he’d rip it off, but he knew the nurse would wag her finger and tape him up five minutes later.

  He hated lying here, his mind spinning, his wound throbbing, blowing into the spirometer ten times a day to keep his lung moving. And attending therapy with the very married blond therapist.

  He stretched his hand, winced, and booted up the laptop he’d cadged from Nana, the young nurse. She was letting him use the department’s spare laptop in return for setting up her boyfriend’s band’s Web site. An hour’s job, but he’d prolonged it.

  He kept it from the eyes of the flic guarding him. Beside his laptop, on the duvet, he saw Le Figaro’s headlines: TRANSPORT STRIKE PARALYZES COMMUTERS. At least he didn’t have to deal with that.

  Below was an article on the continuing investigation into the Fiat Uno reported speeding away from the Pont de l’Alma tunnel, and another on Princess Diana’s autopsy report. How could journalists find more to write about that, he wondered. Near the bottom of the second page he noticed: LA SANTÉ SUICIDE RATE CLIMBS—Mental health professionals demand inquiry into recent suicide. His eye caught on a name in the article.

  Nicolas Evry. The skinhead Aimée had sent to prison. His thoughts went back to her, the Beretta, the blaze of the muzzle flash.

  Before he could read more, the pre-paid cell phone the nurse had furnished him rang. He noted Saj on the caller ID and answered.

  “René, check your e-mail,” Saj said, his voice excited.

  “Any good reason?”

  “Click on the link, René.”

  René found Saj’s message. “Okay.”

  “Can you see it?”

  A blurred video feed filled his computer screen. The gray metal of a bathroom cubicle, a dizzying shot over a tiled floor. Then the sharper focus of a woman checking her teeth in the bathroom mirror.

  He recognized those kohl-smudged eyes, the streaked blond wisps of hair over the leather jacket collar.

  Aimée.

  His heart leaped. With effort, he controlled his voice. “Care to explain, Saj?”

  “Hold on to your hospital gown,” Saj said. “It gets better.”

  René saw a Smurf cup, upside-down files. Heard the continuous rustling of paper, clicks, Aimée’s voice, a man’s. But what riveted his attention were the rows of numbers filling the computer screen. Bank accounts. Their bank account.

  “Aimée’s at Paribas?”

  “Even better, René,” Saj said, his voice vibrating with excitement. “She took this at the investigating examiner’s desk at BRIF.”

  René’s jaw dropped.

  “All I know is that it involved lipstick,” Saj said.

  “Lipstick?”

  “A lipstick camera. But that’s not important,” Saj said with impatience. “Recognize that icon?”

  René tugged his goatee, eyes riveted on his screen. “Two wire transfers from Banque Liban to our account,” he said. “Banque Liban’s registered in Luxembourg.”

  “And has topped Tracfin’s blacklist several weeks running,” Saj said.

  Not good. He felt a tingle in his shoulder. And it wasn’t from his arm exercises.

  “So this wire deposit jangled the security alerts?”

  “Big-time jangle, René. That’s the problem. They’ve frozen the account.”

  No wonder.

  “It doesn’t explain why our account received the wire transfer.”

  “Not yet, René. We’ll trace it and find out what’s going on before Tracfin does.”

  René rubbed his aching hip. “A perfect nut for you to crack, Saj.”

  “Your frozen bank account? That’s your metier, René.”

  Sunlight filtered over the potted violets. A gift from Aimée forwarded from Hôtel Dieu after he’d left. A hollowness filled his chest as he wondered if she’d really shot him.

  “Who knows what I’d find,” René said. What if Aimée had been set up? An unknowing dupe of money launderers, or terrorists? Or, more disturbing, by her mother, a woman on the world security watch list. Had Aimée’s imminent New York trip triggered events? The implications spiraled: arms payments, shell companies, offshore accounts. “Too many possibilities, Saj. None good.”

  He shouldn’t have anything to do with Aimée now, for her sake and his. He’d avoid making contact. Once he got involved . . . non. He should leave this alone, ignore the worry for her in his heart. He should do a lot of things, he thought.

  “Banque Liban spells major trouble,” Saj said. “I can’t see Aimée involved in laundering money or committing a crime. Can you, René?”

  The muscles tightened in René’s neck.

  “Zut, René!” Exasperation sounded in Saj’s voice. “I sent you the tape Aimée discovered of the woman impersonating her getting in the taxi. Aimée didn’t shoot you.”

  His heart told him she couldn’t have. But his eyes didn’t lie. Or had they, in the dark?

  René’s gaze went to the flic speaking with the nurse at the intake station. “What can I do? They’re watching me.”

  “I missed my meditation today, René,” Saj said. “Alors, my chakras need alignment. I need your help.”

  He shouldn’t get involved.

  “Only on one condition, Saj,” René said: “you keep this from Aimée. We deal with whatever I find together, compris?”

  He heard Saj’s sigh of relief. “Bien sûr!”

  “Do me a favor, Saj. Print it out in a continuous sequence. Messenger it over inside a floral arrangement. I’m at the Clin-ique du Louvre.”

  He leaned back on the pillow, wondering what he’d agreed to. None of his hacker friends who’d played with the big boys at Tracfin had emerged unscathed. But Aimée had a lot more to lose than hackers might. A business: her livelihood. His.

  Thursday

  AIMÉE LOCATED THE Cours Carnot class
e préparatoire in a building behind the Palais Royal. Prime real estate, despite the soot-stained façades. When apartments here appeared on the market, they went from the mouth to the ear, as the saying went, snapped up via a concierge’s hint before the previous owner lay cold in his grave.

  Cours Carnot prepared students for the tough second- and third-year entrance exams required for the École des Hautes Etudes Commerciales. She’d come up with a story to lead her to the students in the study group Nicolas had circled. And she didn’t have much time.

  “Bonjour,” Aimée said. “I hope you can help me, Madame.”

  The middle-aged receptionist shot her a quick smile. Hennaed hair, too much makeup. Thick silver bracelets clanked on her wrist.

  “Take an enrollment brochure,” she said. “That answers most questions.”

  The small reception area, no bigger than a closet, branched off to a hallway to where, Aimée figured, lay classrooms. A pot of orchids on a stainless-steel cube, along with an uncomfortable metal tubular chair, completed the ensemble.

  “Merci, Madame . . . ?”

  “Delair. A Cours Carnot application’s inside the brochure. I assume this concerns your brother or sister who wishes to prepare for the concours?”

  “My brother.” Aimée took a tissue from her bag. “I need to inform my brother’s friends of his funeral.”

  “Quoi?”

  “It’s terrible. So sudden.”

  “Désolée, Mademoiselle, but. . . .”

  “See.” She pulled out list and pointed to the circled group. “My brother Nicolas Evry attended your course four years ago in 1993. I’m Maud Evry.” She used the name of the sister from the La Santé list of relatives. “I live near Roubaix and don’t know how to contact his study group friends.” She paused. “He spoke of them so often. Yet I can’t remember their names. Could you help me?”

  “1993? Nicolas Evry? But I worked here then, and I don’t remember him.”

  Aimée felt her lead slipping away. Maybe he’d never enrolled. Maybe she’d be back at zero. Again.

  “Could you check, please? It would mean a lot to me.”

  The woman set down her pen. Her silver bracelet tinkled on her wrist. “As I said, I’m not familiar with his name. Of course, there’s also a confidentiality issue.”